How to play Commander: the rules that make it different

Commander is a multiplayer Magic format built around one legendary creature you pick as the face of your deck. Most games have three or four players, last an hour or two, and are as much about the table as about winning. If you already know how to play Magic, you only need a handful of extra rules.

The deck

A Commander deck has exactly 100 cards, including your commander. Apart from basic lands, every card is a single copy: no playsets, no second Sol Ring.

Your commander is a legendary creature (or a card that says it can be your commander). It starts the game outside your deck, in a special place called the command zone, where everyone can see it.

Color identity

Every card in your deck must fit your commander's color identity: the colors of every mana symbol on the commander, including the ones in its rules text. If your commander is Atraxa, Praetors' Voice (white, blue, black and green), you can play any card that uses only those colors, but no red cards.

Color identity counts mana symbols anywhere on the card, not just in the cost. A card with a red mana symbol in an ability is a red card for deckbuilding, even if it costs only colorless mana. Lands follow the same rule: a land that can make red mana belongs only in a deck whose identity includes red.

The game

• Life total: everyone starts at 40 life instead of 20.
• Opening hand: seven cards, as usual. Most groups use the "free first mulligan" house rule: your first mulligan doesn't cost you a card.
• Turn order: play goes around the table. The first player usually skips their first draw, as in other formats.
• Free-for-all: every player is your opponent. You decide who to attack and when. Making deals is allowed, and breaking them is remembered.

Casting your commander

You can cast your commander from the command zone whenever you could normally cast it, paying its mana cost.

If your commander would go to your graveyard or be exiled, you may move it back to the command zone instead. You can cast it again, but each time you cast it from the command zone it costs more for every previous time you cast it from there. This extra cost is called the commander tax. A commander with a mana value of 4 costs 4 the first time, 6 the second time, 8 the third time, and so on.

The tax only counts casts from the command zone. Bouncing your commander to your hand and casting it from there costs its normal price.

Commander damage

If a single commander deals 21 or more combat damage to you over the course of the game, you lose, whatever your life total is. The damage has to come from the same commander: 11 from one opponent's commander and 10 from another's doesn't count.

This rule gives aggressive decks a real way to win against a table of 40-life players, and it's why a big commander that keeps attacking is a threat you can't ignore.

Winning

You win by being the last player standing. Players lose the usual ways (life at 0, drawing from an empty library, ten poison counters) plus the commander damage rule above. When a player loses, everything they own leaves the game.

Before you play: the brackets

Commander is casual by design, so the most important rule isn't on a card: play decks that match your table. Wizards of the Coast's bracket system gives decks a power level from 1 to 5 so players can describe their decks before the game. Our guide to Commander brackets explains how it works, and the pre-game talk covers how to use it.

Where to go next

• Build a deck: Building your first Commander deck
• Get your lands right: Mana bases for Commander
• Practice: play a game against the AI on Podtable, no setup needed.

The official rules are kept by Wizards of the Coast at magic.wizards.com/en/formats/commander. If this guide and the official rules ever disagree, the official rules win.